The fact is, the more people who live on this little globe, the more resources we use, the more we strain the entire system.

The question is, to what extent are we responsible for making our family choices based on the planet? Also, to what extent should we discuss this issue? Does it risk alienating the people we want to convince? Or is it a reality we have to face up to no matter what?

----------

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

December 10, 2008

First off, after my recent post about Christmas with no presents, somebody sent me a link to a great site that helps facilitate giving gifts to charity as Christmas presents. You might find it helpful: Redefine Christmas. Onwards...

Here is a little bit from the epilogue of my book. Just thought you might enjoy a taste:

As Annie Leonard says in her online video Story of Stuff, the live impactful lives we lead may not be so great:

"We are in this ridiculous situation where we go to work, maybe two jobs even, and we come home and we’re exhausted so we plop down on our new couch and watch TV and the commercials tell us “YOU SUCK” so gotta go to the mall to buy something to feel better, then we gotta go to work more to pay for the stuff we just bought so we come home and we’re more tired so you sit down and watch more T.V. and it tells you to go to the mall again and we’re on this crazy work-watch-spend treadmill. And we could just stop."

**********

We could just stop.

**********

Somewhere I read a talk of Pema Chodron’s where she says something like, “Most of us in this room are not so rich that we have nothing material to worry about and we’re not so poor that we can’t think about anything but getting ourselves fed. So let’s start by giving thanks for our middle birth.”

What Pema means about a middle birth is that we can be so overwhelmed by suffering that we don’t have the luxury to examine our lives. Or we can be so distant from suffering and so coddled by material comforts that we become too complacent to examine our lives. In a middle birth, we have just enough suffering to get our attention but not enough to overwhelm us.

Perhaps part of the problem in our response to the planetary crisis—why we don’t stop, as Annie Leanord says—is that so many of us in the developed world have such a cushy lifestyle that we are stuck in our complacency.

This is like the story of the Buddha himself. As it goes, his father was a king and wanted more than anything to protect his son from the knowledge of suffering. As a result, his son was never allowed to see anything that might upset him. Buddha came to believe that life was only about the pursuit of his own pleasure. He never questioned his life, because he never had a reason to. He just lived it as it had been delivered to him—until one day when he left the palace.

For the first time, he saw sick people and old people and dead bodies. He saw that these things ultimately happen to all of us. That sooner or later, we all suffer. Buddha asked, if old age and death are what happens to us, then what is the meaning of our lives? If the pleasures we seek are not permanent, then how important are they? What is the worth of all the riches and pleasures I’ve experienced in the palace which one day will be taken away?

Buddha was shocked out of his complacency and began searching for a better life. The good news is that, at least as the parable goes, he found it.

Maybe this global warming thing, along with all the other environmental crises, along with the economic meltdown, could be for us in the developed world like leaving the palace and seeing dead bodies and the old people and sick people. Maybe it will wake us up enough to ask: What is this life? What is it for? What is its meaning? How should we live?

Maybe it will wake us up enough to make us search for a better, more meaningful, more purposeful life—for us and for our planet.

----------

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

December 09, 2008

Yesterday I posted about the trash I'd generated through eating takeout when I got too busy to cook for myself. Someone commented that eating takeout--in itself--is no problem. Cooking at scale may save energy. The problem is the plastic or cardboard containers that get generated.

Commenters left two suggestions behind for ways to get take-out without making trash. One is to take your own reusable containers to the take-out place yourself. I've done this before and the server liked it so much, he gave me extra food.

Another option is to ask the manager of your favorite food place if they would mind keeping a reusuable container belonging to you on hand. That way, they can deliver to you and you don't have to pick it up. When the delivery man drops off your food, you give him back a second, clean container to take back and store until next time.

Here's what's neat about this kind of idea. When you do it, it generates buzz, because other people are forced to get involved. It's like the glass jar I carry for coffee. Everyone wants to talk about it. Same with the reusable takeout tubs. Everyone will want to talk and it's chance to change a few more minds.

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

December 08, 2008

Finished the book at last, but in the final few weeks, I discovered that I just couldn't keep it together to do my family's food shopping.

We temporarily turned back into take out mavens, causing more plastic tub trash in a couple of weeks than in the last couple of years.

This begs the question, if so many other people are too busy to avoid the mounds of trash, what can we do to help avoid that waste of resources?

Doesn't this mean we have to change the culture to make sustainability like falling off a log?

----------

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

December 05, 2008

One more day of concentrating on my book folks, but wanted to let you know that the documentary about the No Impact Man project will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein did a wonderful job directing. I'm very excited. You can read a little more about it in Variety or at the Times' Carpetbagger blog.

----------

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

December 04, 2008

While I take another day on my book, I wanted to give you all a chance to just talk. What's on your mind?

Ask questions. Answer questions. Make comments.

Somebody hurry up and be the first to say something.

Now then, as for all you readers who get the blog by email, you will actually have to come to the web page itself to participate and to read what other readers are saying.

To do it, click on NoImpactMan.com. You'll see these words on the web page. At the bottom of the post, you'll see the word "comments." Click on that and you will be able to see what everyone is saying and you will also be able to leave comments or questions of your own.

Let's talk. Let's have fun. Let's figure out how to save the world.

----------

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

December 03, 2008

I'm actually turning in the final draft this week. Do you think you guys can do without me for one day while I keep my eye on the ball?

----------

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

December 02, 2008

While the stock market took another nosedive after news that--guess what?--we're in a recession, The New York Times last week published a story about how the slump may limit moves on clean energy.

According to the story:

"From Italy to China, the threat to jobs, profits and government tax
revenues posed by the financial crisis has cast doubt on commitments to
cap emissions or phase out polluting factories."

On the one hand, "government action could stimulate the economy and create new jobs in producing sustainable energy."

But “European industry is saying we can’t deal with financial crisis and
reduce emissions at the same time,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. “Heads of government have
other things on their minds.”

"In the short term, economic declines tend to reduce emissions, because
industrial production slows down... But such
reductions are inevitably temporary, rebounding when the economy picks
up."

"Against this, the current economic slump could have serious long-term
environmental consequences, because it may reduce investment in greener
production technologies without fundamentally changing the longer-term
emissions picture. With so many renewable energy projects and programs
in their nascent stages, their success is easily undercut by lack of
credit or financing."

My question is this, if it turns out that, in a recession, if government and business can't do the job, can we, the citizens?

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.

December 01, 2008

I've said before that if our automobiles really make us happy, then to hell with the planet. The thing is, I don't think they do.

Listen:

American adults average 72 minutes a day behind the wheel of a car, according to the WorldWatch Institute.

That’s more than twice as much time as the average American father spends with their kids, according to the United States Department of Labor.

It’s the equivalent, if you do the math, of just over one eight-hour workday a week or just under 11 40-hour work-weeks a year.

According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 17 percent of the average American’s income goes on the costs of owning and running a car.

That means, in other words, that we spend eight weeks of every year working to pay for our cars.

Putting it all together, we Americans spend the equivalent of nearly five work-months a year either driving our cars or working to pay for them.

And a lot of the time, reports the Texas Transportation Institute, we aren’t even getting anywhere, since we annually spend the equivalent of 105 million weeks of vacation sitting in traffic jams.

Every ten minutes we spend commuting, according to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, means 10 percent less connection with our friends and communities.

Even if you don’t own a car, research also shows that the more traffic on our city street the fewer friends we have, because the traffic causes to spend less time hanging out in our neighborhood.

You don’t need to own a car either to breathe the 70 to 80 percent of air pollution that automobiles and trucks contribute in New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas, according to the Environmental Defense Fund

Meanwhile, studies show that the more a nation’s citizens commute by walking, biking and public transportation, the less obese they are.

To top it all off, people who ride bikes or walk to work are 24 percent more likely to be happy with their commute than those who drive their cars.

----------

Colin Beavan (that's me!) is now leading a conversation about finding a happy, helpful life at Colinbeavan.com. If you want to know how people are breaking out and and finding authentic, meaningful lives that help our world, check it out the blog here and sign up to join the conversation here.